Runes

Introduction:

Season 3 (big) update

Season 3 affected several aspects that were central to this guide, and a big overhaul is due. The math of gold generation is already available, but the AP builds are not set in stone on account of the vast amount of item changes.

As a whole, the GP10 route is now both easier and reaps larger benefits due to the changes to global movement speed and Philosopher stone recipe, meaning the two GP10 items can be rushed.

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Avarice (a.k.a. GP10) runes have been paid increasing attention recently when some players started using them on mid AP carries. Instinctively, it can be understood that this option trades early game presence for a gold advantage that progressively gets overwhelming the longer the game lasts.

Avid players of the old remember how he would spend the first 20 minutes of the game farming top lane, leaving his team pseudo 4v5ing in a Nasus way only to come back with an early and , be the manliest pirate around and proceed to wreak havoc on unsuspecting opponents, triggering rage and surrender votes.

While the most widely adopted attitude in the community would be to ridicule and threaten to report the trolls running this setup, I am pretty sure that if you're reading this, you'd like to know more about the possible benefits of such a setup before judging it.

Credit given where credit is due, some valuable number crunching work on these runes has been done by community members:

Wraiths camps are less accessible and grant less farm, which indirectly makes GP10 more appealing.

Added "When are charge items worth it?" section.

The information in this guide is getting progressively updated, some fragments might be outdated.

15 July 2012, Zyra patch:

health reduced from 250 to 200.

health regen reduced from 18hp5 to 15hp5.

20 June 2012:

Added more results (new build + scenario).

Added Freakonomics section.

Greed is good: basics of gold generation

Passive gold generation:

Gold generation starts when minions spawn (1:30).

Natural gold generation is 16 GP10 (gold per 10 seconds).

Avarice seals each provide 0.25 GP10, for a possible total of 9x0.25 = 2.25 GP10.

Avarice quintessences each provide 1 GP10, for a possible total of 3x1 = 3 GP10.

The greed mastery in utility tree provides up to 2 GP10.

,, each provide 5 GP10.

Minions:

Waves of 3 melee and 3 caster minions spawn every 30 seconds.

A cannon minion spawns every 3 waves.

Gold from minions increases every 3 waves.

Assumptions and items builds

Gold from jungle monsters, dragon, baron, towers, kills and assists is not taken into account.

Passive abilities increasing gold received such as Ashe's and Twisted Fate's passive are not taken into account.

The player blue pills back to base when he has enough gold to purchase the next item (more or less 30 seconds), and, probably the wildest assumption, always gets an extra .

The GP10 items purchased will sit in the inventory for at least the first 30 minutes of the game. They can later be upgraded or sold back at 50% price to make room for final items (like Doran's items).

The AP carry starts with and in the Bau scenario, otherwise he gets the two GP10 items as soon as possible.

In the Standard AP business as usual (BAU) scenario, the player replaces the 2 with GP10 items.

In all GP10 items scenarii, the player starts with , gets in that order, then proceeds to purchase the normal build.

Last hitting success rate: 70% (roughly 4 minions per wave). Keep in mind that this includes the minions missed during teamfights, shopping trips and roaming action. Leave sky-high farming rates to Alex Ich.

Based on the price of , you're getting 264g worth of HP, which leaves us 436g for wards. Namely, is gold effective from 6 wards. You can only have 2 at any given time, but it should be sufficient to ward both sides of your lane.

Most of these stats, with the exception of movement speed, can be easily compensated with the generated gold.

gives 160 hp, 6 mp5 and 30 AP. gives 7 hp5, 9 mp5, 25 AP.

Until you get your , you will be slightly weaker than if you were using a normal build. Play accordingly, pay increased attention to the jungler's position, don't overextend if summoner spells are down. Healing, escaping and defensive spells in general are extremely useful in surviving this phase.
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Freakonomics, fun facts about GP10

This section is for anecdotal facts that I find fun / interesting. Like the book this section is named after, the presented points are based on pure economical value and are therefore not 100% valid in real situations. It's merely for fun that I mention them, they're not key to the decision process, feel free to skip it.

Normal passive gold generation is 96 gold/minute.

With runes + 2 items, you get 91.5 bonus gold a minute. That's like getting a dragon's worth of gold every 2 minutes, or a kill every 3.5 minutes.

Key findings.

Going the GP10 route delays your core build by about 1-2 minute(s).

Whatever your farming skills, using even a partial setup, going GP10 will ALWAYS get you to earlier.

GP10 will get you to and earlier. You can get them up to 5 minutes earlier.

The effects are more pronounced if going for a standard build. will still be build within 15 minutes of play and will end up well-stacked.

If you start with the rune setup (31.5 g/min) and get your two GP10 items within 5 minutes (each 30 g/min), you can get a "for free" at minute 11.

Most of the gold benefits are provided by the rune setup and the 2 GP10 items. Adding 9/0/21 masteries to the mix only has marginal effect and is therefore optional.

Associated playstyles.

When going the safe GP10 way, you find yourself facing two choices:

Farm ALL the things!

Considering you're going to make a shitload of gold by just sitting in mid lane, why not add insult to injury and become the richest pimp on the fields of justice? With this playstyle, you're aiming at staying in mid lane as much as possible, grabbing enemy wraiths whenever available and possibly yours if your jungler agrees / is not going to kill them in the following 20 seconds.

This playstyle suits champions with good wave clearing and staying power, but low kill potential without your ultimate. Get your gold amount off the charts, get one or several items ahead of your opponents and destroy whatever stands in your way during teamfights.

Recommended champions:

Rack up the ganks

A different attitude would be to use the safety of your self-growing stash of precious metal to start roaming and making the plays. With your comfortable income, you reduce your chances of falling behind.

Misc tips:

if bot/top river is heavily warded, go through the jungle.

ambushing your lane opponent at blue golem can really pay off.

consider using on bush wards. People just don't expect it anymore.

don't forget tower diving. By the time you get your core build you should be able to coordinate flawless dives with your jungler.

Recommended champions:

The following champions can excel in both playstyles, due to their wave clearing prowess and heavy crowd control. Use your best judgement.

Bottom line: when to use GP10.

If, due a combination of

your playstyle (you enjoy passive laning)

your champion (weak early game, late game monster)

your lane opponent

your team jungler as well as the enemy jungler (CC and damage wise)

the early game does not seem very promising in terms of kill opportunities, go for the GP10 build.

If, however, the conditions demand or encourage an aggressive early game presence, stick to standard. If you find the movement speed quintessences to be crucial to your play, and getting simply doesn't cut it, it's probably wiser to give up a few hundred golds in exchange for flawless positioning.

Oversimplified examples:

You're playing / vs / . Your team picked good early-mid game characters but definitely wouldn't mind if you could carry late game

==> Get rich.

You're playing / vs / . Your team picked , and . As your allies are likely to struggle before late game kicks in, you'd better make sure you start dominating this lane as soon as possible and come share your happiness with the other lanes

==> Go for a strong early game. Stealing enemy blue buff and securing dragons are also good ways to ensure dominance.

Final Comments

Following the modifications on and of the Zyra patch, let's share some thoughts about the whole gp10 mechanics.

It would be foolish to pretend these changes came out of the blue and were unnecessary: when you see professional gamers (with flawless farming skills) using and on 4 out of 5 team players, there is a strong hint something has gone wrong in the balance department.

was already cost efficient in terms of stats, not even accounting for the gold generation, which added insult to injury. The changes are not really significant stat-wise, and the gold generation remains unaffected. You can expect it to be there for a long time, as it is a necessary evil on which the game's developers based the 0 cs support and low-income jungle. Just like , it's role in the current game is too prevalent to remove it or apply major modifications.

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This is the first guide I've written on Solomid and I hope it brought you some information regarding an unusual way to play the AP carry role!

Remember to take these guidelines with a grain of salt as this guide overlooks crucial aspects of the game such as global gold and kill/assist bounty. Do not hesitate to run simulations / calculations to double check the numbers and come and share them.

Feel free to share your remarks in the comments, I will gladly update and refine this guide according to your suggestions!

Nice guide & thanks for the update! It really helps me playing AP Carry. I never thought about buying GP10 items instead of x2 Dorans until i saw your guide. I think it really works well with Karthus because he is a very strong End-Game champion and its hard to kill your opponent in early game.

Thanks for the doing the math, I've been increasingly interested in gp10 on my carries, i ran a few games with them on anivia and kassadin but i wasn't sure if it was worth it. Seeing regi stream TF with 3 gp10s made me think "if he's doing it, i should be too" and the math you laid out makes it clears its worth it. Thanks for your work, it's helping my game for sure.

Great Guide! Thumbs up! Thank you for this theorycrafting. helps a lot. but on some champs i feel this build is really inefficient for e.g. veigar or brand or cassio though i believe its really strong on kassadin

Interesting idea you mention here. While calculating the gold effectiveness of items was not the initial idea, it does make sense. However I have to admit it would be challenging to estimate the worth of active properties of Shurelia's Reverie or Deathfire's Grasp. I'll think about Eleisa's Miracle though.

I'm in theorycrafting love with this idea on Gragas. Ideally the build would go Philo-Heart-Kage-DC-DFG. Heart's HP increases the effectiveness of Gragas' passive while Philo helps him regen the early ranged harass. Kage goes into DFG for 100 to 0 HP potential.

Thanks for the guide, its a good explanation of the gp/5 strat. I think something to consider is theorycrafting upgrading the gp/5 instead of selling it. Kage's into DFG is the obvious one but closely behind is upgrading Philo Stone into Eleisa's Miracle then selling it off as this actually nets you a profit of 10 gold. On off-tank APs like Maokai and Gragas, you could even upgrade HoG into a Randuin's. Seeing the cost-effectiveness of upgrading would be really interesting.